We plan to expand the Biostatistics Core that has been providing services and collaborating with members of the Cancer Center over the last 7 years; an expansion is needed to meet an increasing demand for services provided by this shared resource. The mission of the Biostatistics Core, a shared resource of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, is to support and promote high quality, innovative research on cancers. This core is thus responsible for study design, data collection processing, quality control, data storage and retrieval, and data analysis so as to provide all University of Minnesota Cancer Center members with a high level and broad range of expertise in data management and bio-statistics. These services are aimed not only at strengthening research projects but also cover the design, conduct, and analysis of pilot studies, feasibility data and related activities so as to strengthen grant proposals/applications. The input from bio-statisticians to each cancer research project starts early, in a continuing manner.